Buying Sex is a documentary about whether there should be laws prohibiting prostitution. The main story is a Canadian court decision that certain laws that make prostitution illegal are unconstitutional, and that decision gets appealed. The Canadian Supreme Court decided the issue at the end of 2013, after the release of the movie, endorsing the original decision of the court. We see the sex workers who brought the challenge and their lawyer. We see a few men who use prostitutes explaining why they prefer to get sex that way father than get it from their wives or why they don't want to find a girlfriend. Most of the talking heads are women, and many of them have experience of sex work. But some believe that legalizing prostitution will make the job safer, while others think that it will place more women at risk and will serve to disempower women. There is a lot of debate over whether women who go into sex work are making free choices and whether women who make those decisions are really in charge of their lives. There is also some discussion of whether that kind of work is worse than other work open to women with few qualifications, and whether sex work is psychologically damaging. There is plenty of discussion of the risk that sex workers run getting attacked and murdered, but each side has its own take on whether legalizing position places sex workers at greater risk. We get lots of opinions but we get few facts. There is also some moral discussion of whether it is moral to sell one's body or to buy a woman's body. What we do see is the experience of different people, in Canada, New Zealand where prostitution has been legalized, and Sweden, where it has been made illegal. This provides plenty of interesting interviews in brothels, and we see some of the associated porn industry. One idea that gets put forward often is that native women and minority women are at special risk in the sex trade. Many of the women are charismatic and make strong advocates for their view, so the movie works as a way to set out the basic issues regarding the legalization of prostitution.

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